Around the World with Josiah Allen's WifeHolley, Marietta
General
Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife
Holley, Marietta
Women travelers -- Fiction
Josiah gin orders that I overheard to "go at a pretty good jog past
the stores where wimmen buy sooveneers," but I presoomed that they
didn't understand a word he said, so it didn't do any hurt and I
laid out to git some all the same. But what a sight them streets
wuz; they wuz about twenty feet wide, and smooth and clean, but
considerable steep. To us who wuz used to the peaceful deacons of
Jonesville and their alpaca-clad wives and the neighbors, who
usually borry sleeve and skirt and coat and vest patterns, and so
look all pretty much alike, what a sight to see the folks we did in
goin' through just one street. Every sort of dress that ever wuz
wore we see there, it seemed to me--Europeans, Turks, Mohomadeans,
Malays, Japanese, Javanese, Hindoos, Portuguese, half castes, and
Chinese coolies. Josiah still called 'em "coolers," because they wuz
dressed kinder cool, but carryin' baskets, buckets, sedans, or
trottin' a sort of a slow trot hitched into a jinrikisha, or
holdin' it on each side with their hands, with most nothin' on and
two pigtail braids hangin' down their backs, and such a jabberin'
in language strange to Jonesville ears; peddlers yellin' out their
goods, bells ginglin', gongs, fire-crackers, and all sorts of work
goin' on right there in the streets. Strange indeed to Jonesville
eyes! Catch our folks takin' their work outdoors; we shouldn't call
it decent.
We went to the Public Gardens, which wuz beautiful with richly colored
ornamental shrubbery. I sez to Josiah:
"Did I ever expect to see allspice trees?"
And he sez: "I can't bear allspice anyway."
"Well," sez I, "cinnamon trees; who ever thought of seein' cinnamon
trees?"
An' he looked at 'em pretty shrewd and sez: "When I git home I shan't
pay no forty cents a pound for cinnamon. I can tell 'em I've seen the
trees and I know it ort to be cheaper." Sez he, "I could scrape off a
pound or two with my jack-knife if we could carry it."
But I hurried him on; I wuzn't goin' to lug a little wad of cinnamon
ten thousand milds, even if he got it honest. Well, we stayed here for
quite a spell, seein' all the beautiful flowers, magnificent
orchids--that would bring piles of money to home, jest as common here
as buttercups and daisies in Jonesville, and other beautiful exotics,
that we treasure so as houseplants, growin' out-doors here in grand
luxuriance--palms, tree-ferns, banian trees, everything I used to
wonder over in my old gography I see right here growin' free. Tommy
wuz delighted with the strange, beautiful flowers, so unlike anything
he had ever seen before. We had got out and walked round a spell here,
and when we went to git into our sedan chairs agin, I wuz a little
behind time, and Josiah hollered out to me:
"Fey tea, Samantha!"
"Tea?" sez I. "I hain't got any tea here." And I sez with dignity, "I
don't know what you mean."
"Fey tea," he sez agin, lookin' clost at me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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